Patriotic Archives - My Mom Made That

It’s less than a month to the Fourth of July. Can you believe it? Do you have patriotic decorations ready? Honestly, I don’t. I’ve just gotten started. I’ve got a couple of projects in the works, and the one that I’m sharing today is my first completed patriotic craft of the season. Of course, it’s a wreath because as Mellow Man tells everyone– we may not be completely decorated around here, but we have a wreath for every holiday! For this Fourth of July, I made a wreath with chevron burlap ribbon and felt pinwheels. It was a quick and easy way to add to my holiday wreath collection, and I’m delighted with how it turned out. I think I need to make a few more pinwheels for decorations, but I’m really enjoying my Patriotic Pinwheel Wreath.

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I’m so excited that I’ve had the chance to be part of the Red White Blue Series over at Sugar Bee Crafts. There are a bunch of other wonderful projects that are being shared by contributors, so be sure to check out all of them at Sugar Bee Crafts. Today, I’m going to be sharing a beaded coaster tutorial. Several years ago, I saw a segment on Martha Stewart about making beaded coasters, and I mentally stored it away as a project that I wanted to do. The coasters looked so beautiful and easy to make that I knew I wanted to make them for some holiday. I may not have made them exactly the way that Martha Stewart recommended, as I was doing this from memory of a television segment from a few years ago. However, here’s how I made patriotic coasters, using pre-cut cork coasters and seed beads.

In order to make this project, I needed:

Cork Coasters
Seed Beads in red, white and blue. (I needed 4 tubes total to make each coaster.)
Beading Thread (Although I’m sure that a thicker white thread would work fine.)
Beading Needle
Super Tape
Scissors
A Marker

First you’ll need to cut a piece of Super Tape to fit the coaster. All you need to do is trace the shape of the coaster onto the Super Tape. I put it up against the edge, so that I could use the remaining bits of the tape for another project.

After you cut out the circle, I attached one side of the super tape to the cork coaster, and gathered together all of my beads. I used red, white and blue beads, and as each coaster needed 4 of the tubes, and I made 6 coasters, I needed 8 red tubes, 8 white tubes, and 8 blue tubes. I set out the tubes of beads, and the thread and the beading needle. The beading needle and thread, I purchased here.

Before I started stringing the seed beads onto the thread, I needed to make sure that the first bead didn’t fall off. I did this by repeatedly looping the thread into the needle, as you can see in this picture:

I found that about 3 times through insures that the bead won’t slide down and fall off. I then begin to string the beads onto the thread. I used the single colored tubes for the center most colors. The color that I wanted on the outside rings of the coaster was the color that I used two tubes of beads for. I didn’t need all of the two tubes, so there was about a quarter of the beads left in the second tube. The stringing of the beads is the most tedious part, and probably took me 75 minutes a coaster to complete. Once I got towards the end, I tried my best to estimate when there were enough beads on the thread. I didn’t fully knot the other end of the thread when I was done, as I couldn’t be sure if I would need to add or remove a few of the beads.

I then removed the top covering of the Super Tape, and carefully wound the thread of beads into concentric circles around the coaster. I have done it both from the center out and the outside in. I found that moving from the outside in centered the coaster best, but moving from the inside out make the concentric circles the tightest. Try both ways and see what works best for you! After I got the beads wound onto the coaster, I knotted the last bead again by looping the thread repeatedly through the bead.

You can do any pattern of red, white and blue beads, and you could mix them up and not have the colors completely separated, and have patterns of beads if you wanted to! The style ends up being sparkley and delicate looking. They will be perfect for you dinner table on the Fourth of July. Mellow Man noted when I was finished that these coasters were very pretty, but didn’t seem so durable. I wasn’t sure if that was true until I was taking pictures for this post. Monkey was sitting next to me, and reached over and managed to destroy one of the coasters in just a moment. He basically bent the coaster back and popped the thread so the beads went flying everywhere. I thought that everyone might benefit from my learning experience with these coasters!

I’m also linking this project at: